“So what's this we hear about you and Aaron Carpenter then?”

Lydia and Karen had come visiting as soon after lunch as they dared the following day. Mother pushed me out of the house with a good natured grin even though she was swamped with things to get ready for the dance, and the door had barely closed behind me when Karen pounced with her question.

In all truth, it was no surprise that the story had done the rounds of the village so quickly. Aaron had been waiting opposite the house even before I went out to feed the animals. He followed me to the shed, 'to help,' he said, but in actuality he was more hindrance than help. Wherever I turned, there he was in the way, until I almost lost my patience with him. I could see how badly stricken he was though, and it would have been like kicking a puppy to scold him, so I sat him down on a bale of hay while I let the chickens out and spread some corn for them.

He watched while I miked Gertrude — named, so I understand, for one of my aunts who also, according to Mother, eats just about everything she sees — then insisted on carrying the pail of milk back to the house with me. He passed it across to me at the door and set to examining his shoes and the ground near them.

“I've been a bit of an oaf this morning, haven't I?” he asked. “Getting in your way and knocking things about. I shouldn't have come, I'm sorry.”

“Don't talk nonsense, silly.” Kicking puppies has never been a popular pastime with me; I empathise too much with the puppy. “I'm glad you came.” In all honesty, though I wouldn't have been able to explain why, I was happy he’d come. “I enjoyed having your company. The goat's never been much of a conversationalist.” Aaron hadn't been either, but he laughed at my feeble attempt at humour rather than moping about his own shortcomings all over again, and for that he earned a brownie point or two. “Besides, Father wants to meet you. He says he has a few questions for you if you're to take me to the dance tomorrow night.”

The colour drained from his face so fast I was certain he would faint on the spot. I managed not to laugh at his discomfort — well abject terror, more like — but only just. I eased the door open and stepped through backwards, keeping him in sight in case he tried to bolt, and indicating with my head that he should follow.

He was a stammering wreck in front of my father. Worse than he'd been with me, and bad enough that Father looked my way as if to ask if I was sure I wanted to be seen with such a wet rag. I stepped up to Aaron and put a hand on his arm, almost making him start out of his skin, but overall calming him to the point where he could just about converse. Father only had a few questions for him — you know the usual questions a father would ask of any boy brave or foolish enough to ask his daughter out. The answers weren't important so much as the opportunity to intimidate the poor guy, and to have a little fun at his expense. To be fair on Aaron, once he recovered enough from the nasty surprise, he acquitted himself well, answering all of Father's questions to his satisfaction and showing such earnestness in his declaration of honourable intent that I was almost disappointed.

He left our house in full sight of the waking village, and it's uncertain which of the local gossips had brought the news to Lydia and Karen first, only that they most likely all tried.

I scuffed idly at the ground with a boot, unwilling, for the moment, to look in either of my friends' eyes.

“Well,” I drawled, “my two best friends said something to me the other day about forgiving the past and moving on. It took a while for the truth and value of their words to penetrate my thick skull, but in the end I figured they were right and I had been wrong.”

I plucked up the courage to raise my head. Lydia's eyes were glistening with brimming tears, and Karen's expression was unreadable.

“Karen, Lydia, I'm so sorry for what I said to you yesterday. You're right, we all did stupid things we regret when we were younger, and you've more than proved your friendship since. I don't know why I brought those things up yesterday, but I don't still hold them against you, and I won't bring them up again. I'm just glad I have you with me here and now, and I hope that you can forgive me for stirring up the muck and making you both cry like I did.”

It's all a bit cliché, but we ended up in a three way hug in the middle of the street, soaking each other’s clothes with silly tears. Nothing more needed to be said, and nothing was. We only separated when Farmer Green coughed politely beside us. He was leading his donkey, strapped into a cart piled high with goods for the dance, and he hadn't been able to get past us on either side while we had our little reconciliation.

We offered him our apologies and moved out of his way. By the time we reached the green, we were all laughing, and everything between us was right again.

“So,” said Karen, always the swiftest of my companions to speak, “which of your two best friends would you choose as maid of honour?”

“You minx!” I cried in mock outrage. “I've barely seen him once, and already you’re trying to marry us off.”

That set the mood for the afternoon, and we talked cheerfully over our lunches about our hopes and plans for the future. Actually, they talked. I was just too happy to listen and be part of it. I'd never had much of a plan for my future, only hoping that one day I'd find some place that would be right for me. Right now, what lay ahead seemed less clear than ever, hidden as it was behind the obscuring mist of my current changes.

I excused myself soon after we'd finished eating, and hurried back home to help Mother. Charles wouldn't have bothered, or more correctly would have considered it not to be his place to help. It was women's work and not to be undertaken by a man, I'd been told on many occasions. Now at last it was my work too, and it pleased me that I could be a part of it.

Mother was grateful for my reappearance. Though my experience in the kitchen was minimal, it didn't take long to learn the tasks given me. Most of what is considered women's work is mundane and unexciting, which is more likely the reason men choose to evade it than because they consider it beneath them. They wouldn't do it well either, because what makes it tolerable is sharing it with someone. Women can get lost in the exchange of words and feelings and leave their bodies to get on with what needs to be done. If two men were to attempt the same, they’d be too self-conscious about what they were saying, and possibly too competitive about which of them was doing the task best. In the end they’d become bored and their results would suffer as a consequence.

So many things were different about this life as a woman, and I found I enjoyed more than I hated. There is a satisfaction to be had from sharing a task with someone, from seeing the look of gratitude in the other person’s eyes for your help, from chatting as friends and sharing each other's lives. It cuts through all of the drudgery and makes it bearable. Better than bearable even, it makes it enjoyable, and as each task is completed, there's a sense of satisfaction derived from contributing towards something worthwhile.

“Your father's quite taken with your young man,” Mother said at one point in the afternoon. “He told me how well he stood up to being interrogated. Far better, so he said, than when he spoke to my father about much the same thing, and I can attest to that. I was there, or at least on the other side of a door listening. I felt so sorry for him.”

“If it's such an ordeal, then why do they do it to each other?”

“I don't know. It's supposed to be some sort of rite of passage or something, or maybe it's a way of getting revenge for the humiliation they suffered when they went through it. Men, eh? Who can really understand why they do some of the things they do?”

Who indeed?

---

Aaron was waiting again the next morning, only this time he managed to be a little less clumsy. For all his awkwardness, he'd taken noticed the previous day, and this time he helped out by handing me the things I needed almost before I realised I needed them. He carried the milk back to the house with me as well, and I lingered a while with him at the door. I could afford to. With his help, I'd finished my chores with the animals far more quickly than usual.

“I could wish the day away just so it was morning again and I could spend a few short moments in your company.”

It was sentimental nonsense, and I found myself loving it.

“Don't wish all the day away,” I told him. “We usually make our way to the fête shortly after lunch. If you're free then, I'd be glad to see you.”

Probably a little too bold for a country girl, but I was feeling my way in this whole experience. Most women have the benefit of a childhood as a girl to draw on, and a mother to guide them through the process of growing up. I was doing my best to learn everything by myself in just a few short days. If I overstepped my bounds, Aaron made no sign of having noticed. He passed the pail into my hands, covering them with his own for a few brief seconds, during which my heart skipped several beats and my breath caught in my chest.

“Wild horses,” he told me solemnly, “could not keep me from your door.”

He turned and walked away. I watched him round the corner and out of sight. He didn't turn, but I suppose that would probably have been unmanly. I didn't seem to know anymore.

“Come on girl,” Mother said to me impatiently as I stepped into the warmth of the kitchen. “We haven't time to waste today. We've still pies to bake, and then we've all to get ourselves ready, all by lunchtime. And you said you'd help Lucy dress. Honestly, of all the times to go and fall in love, why choose the busiest day of the year?”

That brought me up short. “Do you think I am, Mother? In love I mean?”

“I've seen it enough times in the past. If you're not, then you're making a good show of seeming so. Come on, Charlotte, bring me that milk.”

The morning disappeared in a flurry of frantic activity. I learned how to make pastry, and made a pretty good first attempt at it, even if I own to it myself. By an hour before midday, Mother and I were streaked with flour, but the last of the pies were in the oven and due to be ready by the time we left.

“Well, that's that,” Mother announced to the world in a tone of deep but weary satisfaction. “We've an hour now to get ready. Charlotte, go and wash your hands and face at the pump and then help your sister please.”

No thanks were offered, but then I felt none were needed. I experienced the same satisfaction as Mother, knowing that it came from doing my part. Hard work it was, and I suspected very few people, if any at all, would thank Mother for all the food she had prepared for the feast. You didn't do it for the thanks, although they’re nice to receive now and again. You did it for the satisfaction of being a part of it all. Sometimes being thanked could rob you of that feeling.

I did as Mother asked and ran to the pump. I didn't want to wet my hair as it would never dry in time, so I was careful, scooping handfuls of water and washing the last of the flour from them. A check of my appearance in the water trough showed my face and hair free of blemishes or streaks. I washed myself once more just to be certain, then made my way back indoors.

In our room, Lucy stood by my bed wearing the grin of a conspirator unused to keeping secrets. She stood to one side revealing a dress laid out on my bed.

I couldn't breathe.

It was quite exquisite. Simple, white and oh so very elegant. I spun on the spot to find Mother grinning at me through her own tousled and smudged appearance.

“How did you...? When did...? Mother!”

“It seemed only fitting that you should receive some thanks for all your hard work and uncomplaining effort. You make me proud to call you my daughter, Charlotte.”

“But you must have planned this weeks ago. How did you know?”

“What mother doesn't know her own child, dear? Well? Are you going to try it on, or are you going to stand there all day asking questions?”

I needed no more coaxing. I stripped off my every day clothes, folding them neatly over the foot of the bed as was becoming my new habit, and slipped the white dress over my head. For all its simplicity, it was truly exquisite. It had a full skirt that reached down to just below my knee and short, puffed sleeves with lace embroidery decorating the cuffs, neckline and hem.

It would have been perfect if not for the person wearing it.

The first day of May had developed clear and warm. The sky was the sort of hard, cobalt blue that promised a long and lazy summer, and the spring chill was, of a sudden, far gone from the world. I no longer had reason to wear the thick, woollen tights I had been sporting since the transformation of my status.

I gazed down at the dress, at my hairy arms and legs sticking proud of the sleeves and skirts, and I all but cried for the looking.

“I can't go out like this, Mother. I don't know what these past few days have been, but the sham of it all shows in the way I look here and now. If Aaron were to see me looking like this, he would hate me for all that remains of his life.”

“I don't know what you mean, Charlotte. Don't you like the dress?”

“I love it, Mother. It's perfect. It's more beautiful than anything I've seen in all my life. What's wrong is who's in it. I look stupid. Worse than that, I look ugly. Just a stupid, ugly boy in a dress.”

Mother reeled backwards as though I'd slapped her full in the face. A look of shock and incomprehension settled about her features as her mouth worked silently, her voice robbed from her for the moment. I saw little else as I turned away and buried my face in my pillow.

The silence stretched into forever. My own tears were silent, the anguish too deep even for sobs. No-one moved for an infinite moment of time in, and then...

A small hand touched my arm. My hairy arm. I could feel the hairs pressed between tiny fingers and my own flesh. I looked up into Lucy's concerned face.

“Charlie?” she said. “I don't see a stupid, ugly boy. I see my sister and you're beautiful.” She pulled something out from behind her back where she'd been holding it in her free hand. “I made this for you. You don't need it because you’re already the beautifulest person in the world, but I made it for you anyway.”

I reached out and took the garland of daisies she offered. They were purest white like the dress with vivid yellow centres, and they formed a small circlet, just big enough to sit on top of my head.

“I don't know why you’re sad,” she continued, “but I want you to come to the dance. Please come. If you don't, I won't want to go either. I want to be with you.”

I looked across at Mother who was still struggling to come to terms with... well I'm still not sure what. Whether it had been my outburst, which from her perspective may have been totally unexpected and unfounded, or whether she saw something deeper. I mean she'd said it herself, what mother doesn't know her own child? She must have known I was her son. How could she not have known what this would do to me?

There had to have been some magic involved certainly. My hair had grown a foot and a half under the gentle strokes of the witch’s brush, and my chin had remained oddly hairless since about the same time, whether she'd pulled my embryonic beard back into my face with that tug or what. But what else was magic? Was it actually possible that the entire village, my own mother included, had been altered by some mystic spell to see me as a young woman, or was it more likely that the old woman had enough debt owed her by every man woman and child in the village that they'd been told to see me this way, for whatever reason lay behind the whole scheme. This stood to be the most colossal practical joke of them all, with me as the fool. Was this some sort of payback for my having the temerity to come to her cottage and make such demands of her?

“Lucy's right, dear.” Mother finally recovered her voice. “I don't know what's come over you, but you do look beautiful in that dress. Aaron will be the envy of everyone in the village when he steps up with you on his arm.”

“Don't you get it, Mother? I can't go. Not with Aaron, not at all. Don't you see my arms and legs? They're more hairy than Mr Fletcher's hound. I don't look like a girl. I never have. If I managed to get away with things for a few days it was because I was covered up, but I'm a freak.”

“No you're not dear, and your limbs aren't so bad. Not bad at all I'd say. Charlotte, I don't know what's got into you.”

“How can you say that? I don't even look like a girl! How can I be a girl when I look like this?”

“Charlotte, stop it! I know you're upset, though for the life of me I can't figure out why. If you want proof that you’re a woman, then look back at just the past few days. You spent all of Thursday morning sitting with me working on your sister's dress, doing, I might add, some of the finest needlework I've seen in my long and weary life. Yesterday you forgave the boy who caused you so much misery when you were younger, and you made up with your friends over a matter that would have festered with the likes of your father or any other man I know for weeks or even months. Again yesterday and today, you helped me prepare all the food for the celebration this afternoon. You didn't need to be asked, and you didn't tire from it until the job was done. If I needed proof that my daughter was indeed a woman, and I don't mind, then that would stand as all the proof I'd need. You could lift your skirts right now and show me something only a man should have dangling between your legs and I'd sooner disbelieve my own eyes than the evidence of the past few days.

“Charlotte, you are my daughter. You always have been for all your attempts to deny it, and you always will be in my eyes. You are beautiful, and even if you cannot see it on the surface — and for all the heavens and all that's holy I can't understand why — you must see it within yourself. In here,” she touched my brow, “and in here,” she rested the palm of her hand against my chest, “you are more woman than anyone in this village.”

I so wanted to believe her. In less than three days a part of me had risen to the surface from where it had been held, suppressed by all my efforts to be what my father wanted me to be. It had asserted itself, not so much changing me, but completing me. As I sat there, a war raging within me between despair and desperate hope, I realised she was right. Whatever I was on the outside, I was this on the inside. I had spent a great many years being ashamed of who I was, because I couldn't aspire to be what it seemed I ought to be, but who had a right to tell me what I ought to be? Who but me?

I squared my shoulders and wiped away the tears with the palm of my hand. Let them laugh if they chose. These past few days I had found my natural place, and I would take it no matter the consequences.

“Well,” I sniffed looking across at Lucy's still worried face. “If that's the case, I suppose we'd better get you dressed, young lady. I don't suppose we have much time now, do we?”

“What do you mean?” Mother asked. “We're women. We have as much time as we need.”

---

It was well past the appointed hour when Lucy and I emerged. After I'd helped my sister into her dress, Mother had stayed to braid my hair, while I braided Lucy's, then she had left us in order to keep Father calm.

We took our time, Lucy and I. A few minutes here or there was of little enough consequence, but to appear looking anything less than our best would have been sacrilegious. I'd heard tell of women in the big cities who shaved the hair from their arms and legs, just as Father shave his beard daily, and my mind turned to Father's cut-throat razor sitting on a high shelf, out of curious hands' reach, in the bathing room. The idea was a good one, but it really would have taken too long, not to mention the inevitable nicks and cuts my inexperienced hands would have inflicted on my limbs.

For Lucy, the time was well spent. Her dress was wrinkle free and hung just right. Her feet were encased in elegant, lacy, white socks and white sandals. Her hair was made up in the most intricate of braids and crowned with the primrose garland I had all but forgotten the previous evening.

Yesterday afternoon had disappeared in a surge of frenetic activity, and it had only been when Mother glanced out the window at the fading light and mentioned that she ought to start dinner before Father came home, that I remembered. Fortunately the bush was near enough that I could still be there and back before darkness fell. I had begged use of Mother's small pruning shears and run off into the fading light.

We had toyed with the idea of borrowing a necklace or some bangles from Mother's jewellery case, or adding a little colour to her face. Makeup was frowned upon in the country and only sparingly accepted in the far off city, or so I had heard, but there were tricks that could be readily used. Pinching the cheeks wasn't so painful and it brought colour for a brief while. A very fine dusting of soot could darken the eyelids and under the eyebrows to make the eyes seem larger and more noticeable. There is such a thing as gilding the lily though, and it didn't take much consideration to realise that Lucy's charm lay in her natural and unadorned beauty. The dress and hair were more than enough enhancement.

With me, the efforts and results were very different. Mother had left most of my hair to hang loose and taken only a very small amount to form a braided crown around my temples and the top of my head. It formed the perfect seat for Lucy's daisy garland, and it framed my face well enough to soften what I could no longer continue to deny were masculine features. The dress hung as well as any I had seen worn, but that only emphasised the wrongness of my limbs. I was no hairy animal, nor where my arms and legs as well muscled as those of most young men in the village, but neither were they slender and elegant, smooth and hairless as those of all the girls I'd ever seen. I stood somewhere in the middle which meant I lost either way. Dress me up as a man and I possessed an effeminate air. Dress me up as I was now, and no-one could deny the coarseness of my appearance.

I toyed once again with borrowing my father's razor, but I had neither time, nor skill, nor faith in myself to make things look any better. I considered wearing woolen stockings to cover my legs, of looking for something with longer sleeves to cover my arms, but the day was too warm and they would have looked, if anything, more wrong than I did already. Lucy ran off to Mother and Father's room and returned with a pendant and a bracelet.

Despite being comfortably off, we had little money available for luxuries. We didn't miss them, but evidently Father felt he needed to give Mother something more, so some years before, he had bought some costume jewellery from a passing troupe of actors. She had called him a fool, but secretly she had been delighted with her trove, which she kept in pristine condition and wore only very rarely. She had told Lucy and me that we could use some of it if we so chose.

It wasn't gold, or even gold leaf. The stones were paste and the metal some alchemical trickery that threatened to turn black if worn too often or for too long, but it was pretty enough. The delicate bracelet Lucy clasped around my wrist seemed to do more to emphasise the wrongness of how I was dressed, and the pendant, with its lurid green stone, hung down into the cleavage I could only wish I had.

Just as there is no sense in trying to make something already beautiful more so through adornment, so there is less in trying to do the same for something ugly beyond improvement. My heart sank lower at Lucy's renewed efforts, but they seemed to please her, so I played along.

We stepped out together into the view of our impatiently waiting Father and long-suffering Mother. Lucy's radiant beauty served only to highlight my imperfections, but though I searched for some sign of sadness and disappointment in their eyes, I saw none.

“Well, if you ladies are finished with you frippery,” Father said with mock impatience — at least I assume it was put on, “we had best be going. Charlotte, while I can understand your desire to look as best as you can, there is only so long you can keep a young man waiting before he loses heart. I suggest you go and find Aaron before he decides to throw himself into the mill pond or chooses some equally wasteful end for himself.”

The moment I had been dreading most since I first put on this damnable dress was upon me. Once he saw through my frayed and inadequate disguise, I was certain he would be merciless in his retribution. He would humiliate me so utterly that I would never live it down. He would have to if he were to mend the tarnish this would bring to his own reputation. He would have to play it that this was what he had intended all along, to destroy me utterly.

I hated that he would do such a thing, but I understood, and I didn't hate him. I had grown to appreciate the shy and bumbling young man who looked on me and made me feel so special. Of all the heartaches I could imagine, none would be worse than to see his affection turned to spite.

I could wait no longer. Much as I might want to, if I didn't step through the door, Mother or Father would push me. It would be little enough added to the disgrace and ignominy that awaited me, but I would rather face whatever doom awaited me on my own terms. I lifted the latch and pulled the door open.

---

Aaron turned to see me and his eyes went round like saucers. I didn't dare wait for him to process all he saw. I dropped my gaze in shame, and it was true shame I felt. I held up a hand to forestall any words he might wish to say.

“Aaron, I'm sorry. I never meant... Look I can explain...”

His hand covered my mouth, halting the stuttering flow of words. He stroked me cheek. My unaccountably smooth and hairless cheek. Why hadn't the old witch done as much with the hair elsewhere on my body as she had on my face? I felt the fear and anguish within me turn to anger towards her. How could she raise my hopes so, then bring me to this?

“I'm sorry, what?” Aaron had said something and I had almost missed it. I wasn't sure, but there was something in it that didn't ring true.

“I said, what's to explain? What's to be sorry for? I would have happily waited till winter to see you so beautiful as this.”

“What? I mean... no, I mean what?!” Was this part of his plan to shame me? To lift my hopes yet higher so that he could dash them all the more completely? How could he say such things to me. To me as I was then, a failure of a boy trying with comical, hopeless desperation to become a beautiful girl. “Aaron, when you look upon me, what do you see?”

“What should I see? I only know I've known of you all my life, and yet these past few days it's seemed like I saw you for the very first time. I don't know what manner of witchcraft you employ, but you have climbed into my heart and my soul, and I know that I am incomplete without you.”

I would have asked him more, asked him about the boy he had so tormented when we were younger, asked him how he reconciled that boy with the girl he seemed to see before him now, asked him how it was he still saw me as a girl. Before I could find the words though, a gentle breeze passed through the trees at the edge of the forest, the light shifted and for a moment I saw a figure standing in the deep shadows.

“Excuse me one moment,” I said and headed for where I was sure I'd seen the old woman. She was still there when I reached the edge of the trees.

“I told you to come and see when you were ready. How are you ever going to learn anything unless you do as I say, when I say?” She maintained her habitual sour expression for a moment longer before allowing it to melt into a delighted grin. Until that moment I’d not been aware that she was capable of looking normal, let alone so radiant.

“I don’t understand...”

“Yes, you’ve said that before. Charlotte, what was it you asked of me?”

“To make me a witch?”

“Which I told you I wouldn’t because you were a man, so what did you ask after that?”

“I asked you to make me a woman.”

“And what did I say to you about being a woman?”

“That… what mattered was that I should be one in my head and my heart?”

“Exactly!”

“Are you saying that I’ve managed that? That now I think and feel like a woman?”

“You’re not as stupid as you look, young lady.”

“But that’s my problem right now; I look stupid. Why would you do this to me? Why is it that everybody sees me as a woman and yet here I stand as hairy and ugly and male as I’ve ever been?”

“Because you couldn’t learn to be a woman unless other people accepted you as one.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that we all respond to the influences of people around us, and the people around us influence us based on what they see in us. While your family and your peers saw you as a young man, they treated you as one. They expected you to stand by yourself, to be independent and strong. They discouraged you from embracing your gifts, and from both giving and seeking support to and from the people around you. How could you ever learn to think and feel like a woman when all your life you’d been brought up to behave like a man?”

“So you put me in a dress and somehow convinced the people around me that I belonged in it. Why not just turn me into a woman and be done with it?”

“Because you didn’t want it, dear. At least you were trying hard to convince yourself you didn’t want it. It’s a natural response for someone like yourself. You’re told you’re not allowed to be the way you feel you ought to be, and you accept, to some extent, what you’re told. Since you can’t have it, you convince yourself that you don’t want it.

“So, since I couldn’t change you, I did the next best thing. I changed everyone you met, and it may surprise you to know that it didn’t take much for most of them.”

“What? It didn’t take much to convince them that Mr Hairy Bear here belongs in a dress? You’re right it is a surprise. How on Earth did you convince them of that, especially since you say it was so easy?”

“I simply shifted their perspective so that rather than judging you on what they saw on the outside — most people are very superficial in their manner of judging others — I made it so that they could see your inner self.”

“But…! Gah! No, you said I needed to learn to be a woman on the inside. Now you’re saying I’ve always been one?”

“Yes, dear. Oh, it’s more complicated than you’re making out, but essentially yes. You’ve always had a natural tendency to gravitate towards a woman’s ways. Your natural skill at such things as needlework and cookery, compared to your awkwardness in more manly pursuits for example. Or how about the way you fell so easily into sharing your thoughts and feelings with Karen and Lydia? The way you just got on with those tedious jobs your mother gave you, and understood from the outset how to make them less so. Underneath it all you were always more naturally a woman than a man — certainly in your spirit.

“But by the time you came to me, your natural tendencies had been overridden by the conditioning you’ve been given for so much of your young life; that you should act more like a man and less like a woman. That needed to be undone, and the only way I could see of doing so was to let you see what your life should have been like. Even then you needed some hefty prods before you started to embrace it.”

“But I only asked to be made a woman so you would teach me to be a witch.”

“Is that so? Well it wasn't the reason why I agreed to make you into one. At least not entirely.” She looked at the confusion on my face and sighed. “Look, Charlotte, if I had given you what you asked for when you first asked for it, what would you have done with the power?”

I hung my head, knowing the inadequacy of my answer.

“You'd have sought to teach a lesson to those you thought deserved it, wouldn't you?”

I nodded, all but imperceptibly.

“People like those who made your younger life such a misery?”

I shrugged, which was pretty much as good as an admission. In all honesty, I'd wanted to help people too, but I couldn't deny that retribution had sat quite high on my priority list.

“And so you see why I won't train a warlock. What about now?”

I thought of Billy Fisher who hated the taste and even the smell of fish, and who'd had the misfortune to be born the son of a fishmonger. He'd left the village some years before to join some duke's army. Nothing had been heard of him since. I thought of Jeremy Pie, whose parents had died when a burst bag of flour and a naked candle flame had caused their bakery to explode. Since that day, he'd been raised by his cantankerous grandfather who was in constant pain from arthritis. I thought of Aaron, whose mother had lost her wits when he was too young to remember. Aaron who'd grown up under the same roof as a mad woman who often attacked his long-suffering father for no rational reason. Aaron who was once too young to deal with the horrors of his life with anything other than anger and cruelty. Aaron who'd grown into a caring and sensitive young man, more because of those same hardships and the example of his father than for any other reason. I thought of the dozens of other people within our village who bore some form of suffering or another, and I hurt for them.

“Now you're thinking like a woman, and now is when you'll hear the true call to witchcraft, or not as may be. When you do, if you do, then come and see me.”

I blinked back tears that had formed during my reverie. “But I haven't changed so much. I used to think about other people's sufferings when I was a boy as well. I used to want to help them then. What's so different now?”

“There is so much to that answer, dear one, but this is neither the time nor the place to talk of such things. Your young man is waiting, and I imagine quite impatiently by now.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see Aaron pacing back and forth, kicking at stones. It wouldn’t be fair to keep him waiting much longer, but I still had misgivings about being seen with him as I was.

“This isn’t right,” I said. “However Aaron or anyone else in the village sees me right now, I’m still a man underneath all of this. Whatever anyone else thinks or says, I feel like an idiot dressed like this, and when it comes to light that I was a boy all along, it’ll destroy Aaron’s reputation among his friends.”

“Wasn’t that what you wanted all along? A little payback?”

“Maybe at first, but not now. He’s been so sweet, I just don’t want him to be hurt.”

“And what of yourself? What about you being hurt when people find out that you’ve been going around pretending to be a girl?”

“I don’t think I’ll care. Besides, this hasn’t been pretending has it? You told me I wouldn’t learn to be a woman inside unless I embraced all of this, and now that I have, I find I don’t want to go back. If I have to, I’ll feel bad enough from just being a boy again that nothing anyone could do to me would make it noticeably worse. I just wish I could be a real girl all the way through.”

“And that’s what I’ve been waiting to hear.” She nodded, satisfaction etched on every line and wrinkle of her face, and reached for me. “Here, take my hand. It’s time you saw in yourself what everyone else has seen these past few days. Let me help you become what you have always been inside. At least what you would have been, had you allowed yourself to be.”

The wind rose, swirling around us. She closed her eyes and muttered under her breath. The breeze grew until it was just short of violent. My loose hair whipped across my face, obscuring my sight, and my dress rippled against my skin in an oddly disconcerting way. I can't say how long it went on for, only that I was so caught up in the sensation that time seemed to stop and all the world recede.

The wind faded as quickly as it had come and I found myself looking into the beatific smile of a truly beautiful woman. Old as the hills around us and as gnarled and wrinkled as the ancient oak under which we stood, but still beautiful.

“There you are,” she said as though seeing me for the first time. “Hardships grow within us like pearls, and it would have been a shame and a waste to have left such beauty as you possess locked up inside you.”

I looked down at myself, at slender arms and legs, at milky white skin, as smooth and soft as a baby's, at two small mounds pushing out through the front of my dress. I pressed my legs together and felt nothing between them. I was complete. In a way I'd never realised I could be, in a way I hadn't realised until today that I wanted to be, I was complete. I looked up into the old woman's face.

“Witchcraft's a lonely road, Charlotte. It has its rewards, as you already suspect, but it's lonely. You have a life to lead now, and the love of family and friends and a young man to enjoy. I suggest you go on and make the most of it.”

“But...”

“Come and see me when the revelry is done.” She released my hand and stepped back, disappearing into the shadows. Her words receded with her until they were little more than a whisper on the wind. “We'll talk some more.”

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